It is easy to get caught up in college and university rankings, or league tables as they are called in the UK, so it is always important to understand just how a set of rankings compares institutions. University World News recently published this article on what the rankings do and do not measure: Eight years of ranking: What have we learned?
Lynn O’Shaugnessy, who writes for CBS Money Watch as well as her own College Solution blog, attacks the same topic but focuses on the US News & World Report college rankings, the best known but highly controversial rankings of US colleges and universities: How College Rankings Can Hurt You.
Lynn also discusses one way to gain some insight into how good the teaching at a specific institution might be in her article about the website RateMyProfessor.com. This website covers colleges and universities in the US, Canada, England, Scotland and Wales.